Graduation Day, Possible Ending #2

Summary: Xander wasn't able to talk Buffy out of killing Faith. It still doesn't end well for our heroes. Rather dark for my normal writing.

Challenge: Thanks to Manchester who gave me permission to use his review for my story. I tweaked it a little.

Warning: many, many character deaths, maybe some dark crackficishness at the end.

Timeline: 'Graduation Day'

A/N: Amidst the back and forth comments on my TtH review page between me and a couple others for 'Xander's Morality', a suggestion was made that the story itself just showed one possible outcome and offered another possible one.

Thanks to my betas: none this time.

Disclaimer: BtVS characters belong to Joss Whedon / Mutant Enemy. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission. Dialogue from .

Xander: I just don't want to lose you.

Buffy: I won't get hurt. (reaches into a weapons cabinet)

Xander: That's not what I mean.

Library

Buffy stood there for a second, thinking about what he was trying to tell her. Then she shrugged and said, "I hear you, Xan, but even if I didn't have to do this to save Angel, Faith is too dangerous to let live…especially during the Ascension. I was kidding myself that I could ignore her before."

"While I still think it's wrong, just…be careful. Don't underestimate her," Xander pleaded.

Faith's apartment

On her way to Faith's, Buffy thought about what Xander said about being careful. If Faith had shown her anything in the past, it was that she fought dirty. If she really didn't want to risk Faith winning or getting away, she'd have to fight just as dirty.

With that in mind, she made a couple stops along the way.

When she entered the apartment – unlocked, by the way – Faith was laying down on her bed, facing away from Buffy. The urge to get her attention somehow reared its head, wanting this to be a fair fight. She ruthlessly stomped it down. Faith's actions over the past months, not to mention what she would likely do in the future if she lived, weren't deserving of an honorable death.

So she quietly pulled the gun she stole out of the pawn shop, twisted the silencer on and lined up her sights on the back of Faith's head. Like most other weapons she used, she succeeded with on the first try.

Seeing the brain splatter on the wall made Buffy turn and vomit the contents of her stomach. After several minutes of retching, she went to the bathroom to rinse her mouth out and grabbed a towel to wrap around what was left of Faith's head.

The lack of a beating heart left her with a dilemma: how to drain the most amount of blood from the body. Not knowing the proper way to drain the blood, she opted to go with what made the most sense to her: insert a tube into a major vein or artery and allow gravity to help her with the rest. She put one in a femoral artery and the other in the carotid and let them drain into a giant thermos she stole along with the rest of her 'kill Faith' kit.

She wasn't looking forward to the first time she slept after beating the Mayor – assuming they managed to win. The nightmares waiting for her would probably as bad one of her Slayer dreams, but less cryptic.

Angel's mansion

Buffy refused to talk about what she did with Willow and Oz, but she asked them to stick around until after she took care of Angel. If he recovered fully, they'd need a ride back to the library, and if he didn't, then she would. And maybe she wanted a little morale support at the moment.

Of all the reactions she was expecting after feeding Angel Faith's blood, the gut-wrenching scream wasn't one of them. It was as if he was being torn in two. Several long minutes later, he opened his eyes wearily and looked at her. "Buffy," he gasped. "Is it really you this time?"

Buffy was confused for a moment, but then remembered that Willow said he was delusional. She smiled and said, "It is. And you should be getting better now. I found the cure and already gave it to you."

Angel shook his head wearily. "The curse…the blood and the curse…" he trailed off, closing his eyes again.

Meanwhile, Buffy's widened in fear. Was he trying to tell her that drinking Slayer blood caused that perfect moment of happiness which would free Angelus again? God, what higher power hated her that much to do this to her now?!

Oh god, she couldn't go through this again…but she couldn't let Angelus loose either. She reached into her back pocket and grabbed her stake, gripping it painfully tight in her right hand while she stroked Angel's brow with her left.

That's when she noticed something peculiar.

He was breathing.

In and out, chest up and down, the whole human breathing thing that he never did unless trying to hide the fact he was a vampire. She quickly moved her hand down to his neck and felt for a pulse. "Guys!" she screamed. "Guys! Get in here! Something Hellmouthy is going on!"

They confirmed that he wasn't a vampire anymore through non-lethal means like holy water and a mirror. There wasn't time for anything else because some vampires came looking for them on the Mayor's orders. Turned out that he flipped out when he found Faith's body in the apartment and ordered all of his minions to track them down and bring them to him.

Buffy quickly dispatched the vampires while Oz and Willow loaded Angel into the van. All they had to do now was hope that Giles and Xander escaped, too.

After Angelus, Buffy's birthday and other bad stuff, Buffy and Giles decided that they needed a safe house to meet at in case everything went all kablooey again. Because of the bad association they had with the house, they finally decided on the house where Kralick held her mother. Nobody who knew them would ever think to look for them there.

Buffy breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the sign in the window that meant Giles was there and it was safe to enter. To her shock, Cordy was with him and Xander as well. They had barely managed to escape and it took over an hour to lose the vampires that were after them before they could go to the house.

Giles took the news about Faith's death and Angel's recovery rather well.

He looked at the former vampire and remarked, "Fascinating."

High School

Graduation…

Even though they did their best to prepare for the Ascension – arming the students and prepping the library – Buffy and the others thought it would be best to remain out of sight until it happened. They didn't want to risk the Mayor doing anything rash…like shooting them all with an automatic or something.

After calling him evil for making them listen to his whole speech, Buffy momentarily thought about the fight she had with Angel before coming. He insisted on fighting by her side, but countered by pushing him over. Not only wasn't he vampire-strong anymore, he was weaker than normal because of the residual effects of the poison. Jonathan would probably be able to put up more of a fight than Angel in his current condition.

When the eclipse began, she pushed those thoughts away and focused on the plan: get Mayor Demon's attention and make him chase her into the library so Giles could blow him to the demon afterlife…preferably after she escaped.

Once he changed and the adults started running away, she cried out to the students, "Now!"

She ran forward to get his attention…which she got in record time.

While she was dodging his mouth, the students split between attacking him and defending themselves from the vampires that were boxing them in. Those vampires were also being boxed in by the second wave of former students who had come at their siblings' request. And among them was Angel, who was too stubborn and proud to listen when Buffy said he was too weak to join the fight.

He managed to get one good hit in right away, and that made him think that Buffy was wrong. Then a vampire came from behind him and put him in a chokehold. Within seconds, he passed out and when that happened, the vampire mentally debated about whether he should feed or not. A quick look at the Mayor's new form made him decide not, so he snapped Angel's neck and dropped the body to the ground before searching for another victim.

Ignorant of Angel's demise, Buffy ducked another attempted munching, only to be crushed by the Mayor's tail from behind. If his mouth had been more human-looking, people would have been able to tell he was smiling as he picked her up to consume her body. "This one's for my Faithy," he said, instantly getting the country song 'Coward of the County' stuck in his head because of the similarities in the words.

On the side of the school, Giles waited as long as he could for Buffy to leap through the window, signaling that her crazy plan worked, but all he could hear were the screams of the students. He carefully made his way to the corner and peered around it to see what was happening. The sight of the carnage horrified him. Almost all of the students were dead or about to die.

Although he didn't really expect it to make a difference, he still had to try something, so Giles moved back to his hiding spot and pushed down the detonator to blow up the high school. It was his grave misfortune that as he was working his way back around to help out any survivors, he was ambushed by several vampires who were tired of simply killing the prey for the Mayor to eat. They wanted their own meal, too.

Once he was full, the former Mayor felt the urge to lean back and relax, but with no waist or legs, it simply looked bizarre. And without arms, he couldn't grab things. Oh sure, he could use his tail, but even that had its limitations. Huh, what now?

He spent a century planning for this moment, but now that it had finally come to pass, he feeling a little lost. He never thought about what he'd do afterwards. Then he grew sleepy and curled up to digest his first meal.

He'd worry about coming up with the next phase in his plans when he woke up.

Before he could fall asleep completely, his throat constricted, making him regurgitate the last body he ate. It simply wasn't agreeing with him. He stared at the body and thought, 'I knew Snyder was a difficult person, but I never considered he would be inedible.'

Epilogue

When he finally woke up several days later, it was to the sound of a jet breaking the sound barrier above him. As the sound of a whistle grew louder, he looked up and saw three bunker buster bombs heading his way. "Well, gosh!"